Between 10 and 20 doctors with addiction and other mental health problems are being monitored by a Medical Council committee, the council said last night.
It also said its Fitness to Practise Committee's report on the Dr Moira Woods inquiry would be dealt with by the full Medical Council at the end of January.
At a press briefing, the chairman, Prof Gerard Bury, said US research suggested as many as 5 per cent of doctors there were "dysfunctional".
The Medical Council had set up a health committee early last year under the chair of Dr John Hillery to help doctors with health problems which could potentially make them unfit to practise.
Prof Bury said the purpose was to help doctors before their work was affected to the extent that they became subject to a hearing by the Fitness to Practise Committee.
Prof Bury also said the inquiry into Dr Woods had concluded. The inquiry, which got under way in 1999, arose from complaints from five families who alleged they had been wrongly accused of sexual abuse by Dr Woods in the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin, in the 1980s. She denied the claims.
No details of the committee's findings have been published.